


out with the old, in with the new

by hailingstars



Series: irondad bingo [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: @russos, Birthday Presents, Driving, Embarrassed Peter Parker, Everyone Is Alive, Fatherhood, I wrote this because Tony didn't have to die to retire, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Post-Endgame, Retirement, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony is the real number one spidey fan, Tony muses about retirement and fatherhood, he buys flashmob merch to embarrass his son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 03:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20108668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: “Yeah?” said Peter, and just like that, a little bit of light flickered behind his eyes. “Like… like a mission?”Not entirely a mission. This was about a cake, but Tony nodded anyway, deciding to play along, to keep the smile on Peter’s face.“Awesome… I just miss it, sometimes, Mr. Stark. I miss going on missions with you.”ORTony loves being a retired dad, but he misses teaming up with Spider-Man, so he goes on one last 'mission' to save Morgan's birthday party and get a last minute cake with his spidey son. (Tony also loves embarrassing his son)





	out with the old, in with the new

**Author's Note:**

> happpppy sunday, here's a new irondad bingo

“It’s your turn,” said Pepper, as she snatched the blanket they shared and rolled away to the other side of the bed.

Tony stared at the ceiling, and was convinced, only for about five minutes, he would be content going back to sleep freezing cold, but then, those five minutes passed by and the loud crash that had initially woken them up was followed by the smoke detectors going off. Pepper elbowed him in the stomach. 

“Tony.”

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” said Tony. He sat up in bed and put his feet on the floor. It was way too early for his feet to be on the floor.

Retirement was supposed to be relaxing. It was supposed to be sleeping in on week days, and sipping drinks outside on the porch while watching the sunset over the lake. Not for Tony. He had a child with his DNA and a child with spider DNA and most days he wasn’t sure which was worse, which kept him on his toes more. 

At the moment, it was his spider-child, who, for the last week, had taken to terrorizing the kitchen in the middle of the night. He claimed he was trying to bake a cake for Morgan’s birthday part, but Tony had yet to see any results that pointed to that being the case.

He pulled a robe over his pajamas and headed downstairs, eventually walking into the dimly lit kitchen. It was just as he expected, just as he encountered so many nights before. It was Peter, with flecks of flour in his hair and on his shirt, frowning at a blackened cake sitting in a pan on top of the stove.

_“Peter,” _said Tony, looking around. The kitchen was a mess again. Ingredients everywhere, dirty dishes littered the counter tops. Tony didn’t know how it was possible to make that much of a mess just by attempting to bake one, single cake.

“I know, I know,” said Peter. He tossed a spoon covered in cake batter into the sink. It landed in a mixing bowl that had been filled with water, and it splashed everywhere. “I thought I almost had it this time… but then I just, sort of, fell asleep and left it in the oven too long.”

“Kid, you’re out of time. Her party starts in nine hours.” 

Peter’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a breath as he sat down on a stool. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin Morgan’s party, I was just trying to make it so she would have something homemade, like Ben used to do for me.” 

So that’s what all the mess was about. Peter missing Ben. It made sense, at least to Tony. Failed recipes and forgotten family secrets made grief so incredibly close, present in a way that was inescapable. 

Looking at Peter, with his head hung, with ridiculous amounts of flour in his hair, and sad eyes, Tony knew he had a problem to solve.

He had one kid who’d wake up the next morning without a cake on her birthday, and another who needed some time, some attention, some cheering up. Tony knew exactly what to do.

“Her party isn’t ruined,” said Tony. “We still have plenty of time. We’ll just drive up to that bakery in the city, the one that we love, and we’ll be back with a cake in time to sing happy birthday.”

“Yeah?” said Peter, and just like that, a little bit of light flickered behind his eyes. “Like… like a mission?”

Not entirely a mission. This was about a cake, but Tony nodded anyway, deciding to play along, to keep the smile on Peter’s face.

“Awesome… I just miss it, sometimes, Mr. Stark. I miss going on missions with you.” 

Peter mostly called him Tony. It was a change that happened naturally after he’d blipped back into existence, and one that Tony was happy for, but sometimes, Peter could be caught slipping back into old habits. Sometimes Mr. Stark slipped out in moments that were rare, that were worshipped.

It was looking like back into the past. Like looking at a picture and thinking back to when his boy was younger and less world worn, when he didn’t know the cost of war.

Tony grinned at him, lopsided and warm. “Yeah, I miss it too.”

Just like fatherhood, retirement was a good look on him, but if there was one thing he missed from being Iron Man, it was the occasional team up with Spider-Man.

“I’m gonna change, then we can go.” 

After getting dressed into jeans and a t-shirt, Tony came back downstairs to see Peter waiting for him in foyer, still in his pajamas. The only difference was a pair of Nike slides on his feet and a watch clipped around his wrist. 

“You’re going like that?” 

Peter shrugged. “Why not? The city’s an hour away, and we’re just going to a bakery.”

Tony wasn’t sure, after all these years of knowing Peter, why he was surprised. 

When they got out to the garage, Tony threw the key fab at Peter. He wasn’t paying attention, and it hit him on the shoulder, bounced off him, then hit the ground.

“Hey!” yelled out Peter, as he bent down and picked up the key. “Wait… does this mean… I get to drive?” 

“I’m sure as hell not driving this early. I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”

A grin let up Peter’s face. It was really that easy, to make his day, and one of Tony’s favorite parts about being a father. The small, simple ways he could brighten up his kid.

“Does that mean I get to pick the music, too?” asked Peter, with his hand on the driver’s side door. 

“Absolutely not.”

Peter’s grin fell into a fake pout. Tony didn’t buy it. He knew the kid loved AC/DC just as much as he did. 

* 

“Tony, Tony, Tony…”

It kept going and going. A steady stream of his name, over and over again, and it got louder, too loud to keep his eyes shut and his head pressed up against the window of the car. It got so loud, even, that pretending he was asleep was no longer a viable plan. He’d almost been there, too, almost back in his dreams.

He grunted, popped his eyes open and lifted his head from the window to turn and look at Peter. His eyes were focused on the mostly deserted highway in front of them. The sun was coming up, and the light it cast was golden, the kind of golden that when he looked at it, he knew everything was okay.

Peter, apparently, didn’t get that same memo from the sunrise.

“What?” asked Tony. “Why are you Tony-ing?”

“Are you really asleep right now?”

“I was.” He straightened out in the seat and ignored the way his muscles ached from the position he’d been crouched into. That was something about retirement he didn’t care for, the getting old part. “Is that a problem?”

“It’s just… weird,” said Peter. “Normally when I drive you’re all tense and gripping the emergency brake, and you know, Pepper is in the backseat telling you to breathe.”

“Pepper isn’t here. I had to settle with knocking myself out instead.” 

“But what if I crash?” asked Peter. His tone was mocking, and challenging. It was a test, but really, it just made Tony roll his eyes. “Or get us lost and we run out of gas?”

Admittedly, in the past, Tony had been a little… anxious with Peter behind the wheel, but that wasn’t his fault. Peter was easily distracted. He rambled. He wanted to connect with the people in his car more than he wanted to drive them anywhere. But that felt like a long time ago. Peter was grown, and had grown, by some miracle, into a decent driver.

“I trust you,” said Tony. 

“Really?” 

“Yeah. You’ve come a long way since you hit that tree.” 

“…that tree _ran into me_.” 

Tony laughed. “Whatever you say, kid.” 

He nuzzled his head back up against the window, trying to commit to memory the way specific way Peter perked up at the compliment. Sometimes, it was easy, it made Tony wonder about Howard. What a difference it would have made, just three words, but he never heard them. 

_I trust you. I love you. I’m proud. _

He made sure his kids heard them all the time.

Tony did manage to drift off at least a few minutes before the car rolled to a stop. When he opened his eyes next, they were parked outside of their favorite bakery, but something was wrong. The music. The music was all wrong. The little shit had switched the music when he was sleeping.

He took it back. He didn’t trust him. 

* 

They put in an order for Morgan’s cake at the bakery and got the bad news it would take forty-five minutes to be decorated and ready to sell. Bad news for Tony, anyway. He was currently walking down a city street next to Peter, still in his PJs, and eating donut holes he’d begged Tony to buy for him while they were in the bakery. 

He should’ve forced him to change. He should’ve insisted on it.

“Let’s go shopping,” said Peter, with his mouth full. “I need to get Morgan a birthday present.” 

“Pete, it’s the day of her party, and you still haven’t gotten her a present?”

He shrugged and looked a bit ashamed. “I thought I’d have time this morning, and I couldn’t decide what to get for her.” 

“She’s turning six and you’re one of her favorite people,” said Tony. “You could give her a paper plate with a smiley face drawn onto it and she’d worship it.”

They both stopped walking at the same time. Three men wearing ski masks were in the process of running out of a store with pillowcases filled with loot. They targeted a family trying to get into their car, attempting to steal a getaway vehicle.

They had a lot of nerve. The audacity, the absurdity, that they would pull this kind of shit in front of Iron Man. He was ready to intervene. He was ready to step out of retirement, just this one, for the little guy. 

“Can you believe this, Pete?” asked Tony, but there was no response. He turned his head to the side and Peter was gone. The bag of donut holes sat on the concrete where he had been standing just seconds earlier.

Spider-Man dropped from a rooftop from up above, landed with grace, and made the thieves freeze into place. Tony grinned. No doubt, the boy had a reputation with criminals, and they were right to fear him. 

Tony stood on the side of the curb and watched Spider-Man make quick work of them like a proud dad in the bleachers on game night. They were webbed up in seconds. The loot was returned, and lastly, Spider-Man took a selfie with kids from the family who almost got their car stolen.

“I liked the new suit,” said Tony, when Peter returned. “Nanotech, wasn’t it?”

Peter grinned and tapped his watch, back in place on his wrist. 

The days of Tony designing Peter’s suits had come and gone. Peter didn’t everything himself, with minimal supervision and lately, no instruction from Tony. 

Peter reclaimed the bag of donut holes from the ground and popped one into his mouth. 

“Really, kid?”

“What?” asked Peter, as he chewed. “Can we go shopping now?” 

*

Peter led their way into a small, novelty shop, and a bell chimed as they went through the single door.

It was a cramped shop, filled with both new and used items. The kind of place Tony Stark probably would’ve never bothered going into before he met Peter Parker.

The kid took off down a random aisle once they got inside, effectively abandoning Tony, and leaving him to look around on his own.

He found the Spider-Man aisle immediately. His kid was on everything. Stress balls, frisbees, magnets. He was an action figure, he was a tiki tumbler, he was a pair of flop flips with plastic parts designed to look like webs.

Tony wanted to buy it all, but he knew he’d never survive the whining if he did, so he settled on a dad hat he found at the end of the aisle on a turning rack. The front of it was stitched with lettering that said: Number One Spidey Fan.

It was perfect. He put it on, and it was as if Peter’s spidey senses also alerted him about incoming parental embarrassment. He appeared in front of Tony almost immediately afterward.

“Please don’t,” he said. “Please take it off.”

“No. I like it.”

“Tony…” said Peter, with a whine. “This is just like the time May showed up at my decathlon met wearing a t-shirt with my face printed across it. Is that what you want? You want to look like that?”

Tony paused, pretended to consider. “… does she have any more of those shirts?” 

Peter made a noise between a whine and groan, turned his back, and stormed back off to the other side of the store. Tony called out after him, “Ask her if she has any in my size!”

Another perk of fatherhood he loved to indulge in was the exclusive privilege of embarrassing his kids.

*

“I just don’t know what to get her,” said Peter, as they both stared up at a wall of princess dresses, plastic crowns, fairy wands and some reason, nerf guns. He sounded truly defeated. Spider-Man, apparently, could take care of Mysterio and all his illusions, but didn’t feel up to the task of buying a five-year-old a birthday present.

“Kid, it isn’t a big deal. Just get her anything.”

“But I want it to be special. I want her to remember it,” said Peter. “The way I remember how Ben used to make cakes.”

“That’s a lot of pressure for one present,” hummed Tony, but he got it, or at least, he thought he could understand.

It was about Ben, or it was about Peter’s certainty that since he came back from the dead, death was just waiting to come back and take him again at any second, or it was about both those things, tied up together. It sure as hell wasn’t about cake and picking out the perfect present. 

Either of those two options would be easier to solve than grief and anxiety. 

Sometimes, Tony mused, fatherhood was just doing the best he could do. He could be there. He could help out, in the small ways, and hoped they somehow fixed the wounds he knew would probably never heal. 

Tony put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezed. “Hey, come on, I think I know the perfect thing.”

He led Peter back to the Spider-Man aisle and pulled a Spidey mask from the rack, along with a web-shooter toy that shot silly string. He shoved them both into Peter’s hands. He took them, studied them, and frowned.

“Really? This stuff?”

“Yeah, she’ll love it,” said Tony. “She’ll get to be Spider-Man and make a mess at the same time. It’s her dream come true.”

“If you say so,” said Peter, but he still didn’t sound convinced. 

“I do,” said Tony. He pushed him towards the check-out counter, with the dad hat still in hand.

“You’re really buying that hat?”

Tony looked at him, grinned, and pushed it across to the counter to the cashier. Yeah, he was really buying it. He couldn’t let an opportunity like this, a golden chance to buy a Spider-Man dad hat, fall through his fingers.

* 

Once they picked up the cake, and they were back in the car, Tony slid behind the wheel, as Peter had claimed he was tired. Just as well. Punks who shouldn’t be trusted not to mess with the radio could not be trusted to drive, either. Before Tony started the engine, he reached inside the bag from the novelty shop, grabbed his new favorite hat and put it back on.

“It helps keep the sun out of my eyes,” said Tony, after Peter gave him a glare. 

“You realize where that hat came from, right?” asked Peter. 

“Some factory in china?”

“It’s FlashMob merch.” 

Tony put his turn signal on and merged out onto the main road. “What’s a FlashMob?” 

“Flash Thompson, you know, the boy on my decathlon team?” asked Peter. “He has a YouTube channel and a merch store.”

“Flash…” said Tony, trying to place him. “That penis Parker kid?”

“_Yes._”

“Wow, I never would have guessed,” said Tony. “… there’s a whole store of hats like these?” 

Peter put his head against the window in defeat, closed his eyes, and just five minutes later, started lightly snoring. Tony let him sleep. After staying up late all week, he knew Pete must be have be exhausted.

* 

“Look dad!” 

Tony looked up from his cellphone and into his front yard, that was covered with birthday decorations and silly string. Morgan leapt across the lawn, wearing her new Spider-Man mask, her new toy web-shooters, and her new ballet shoes. They were gifted, with the promise of lessons, from Nat.

“I’m the incredible dancing Spider-Girl!” She landed her last jump with a crouch, then shot the tree with silly string.

The web-shooters had been a win. One of her favorite gifts, and Tony had gotten to whisper Peter an I-told-you-so.

Morgan continued playing superhero ballet, though her party was over, and the sun was setting behind the lake. It was a good day. It was an adventure into the city with his son, and a barrage of good friends to wish Morgan happy birthday. It was over now, but not really. There’d be a lot more birthdays, and Tony planned on sticking around to see them all. 

He looked back down at his phone and used his thumb to scroll through the FlashMob merch store. He already had several items in his cart. He’d gotten hats for Pepper, Rhodey and May, and a small t-shirt for Morgan. 

“What are you doing?”

Tony’s eyes snapped up. He pressed the lock button on his phone when he saw it was Peter standing in front of him.

“Nothing,” said Tony. He slipped his phone in his pocket.

“I don’t believe you.”

Peter sunk down in the chair next to him and they watched together as Morgan silly stringed sticks to the tree, calling them bad guys and telling them the police were on their way to come and lock them up.

“You know there was a time she pretended to be Iron Man,” said Tony. “Now it’s strictly Spider-Man.”

“Jealous?”

“No. Out with the old, in with the new, all that,” said Tony. “I think it’s cute.” 

Tony reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a black glasses case. He hadn’t been planning to give EDITH to Peter. Not for a while, anyway, but there was something about that day that felt right. Peter was grown. He was responsible, and Tony was sure he’d never have to step out of retirement for anything as long as Spider-Man was around and swinging.

“I got something for you,” said Tony, hitting him lightly on the shoulder, until he hesitantly took the glasses case. 

“But Morgan is the one with the birthday.”

“I didn’t want you to get jealous.” 

“I’m not three,” said Peter, as he popped open the case. “Old man glasses?” Tony gave him a look. “I’m kidding. These are great, they’re classic.” Carefully, he took them out of the case and put them on. “Whoa.” 

Tony wasn’t ready for it. Seeing Peter in his glasses. His heart did the same thing it did when Morgan was born, when she said her first words and took her first steps. 

“It’s… it’s an AI? That’s so awesome,” said Peter. He took off the glasses and tilted his head. “But what’s EDITH mean? I don’t get it.” 

“Never mind the name,” said Tony. He didn’t want to kill the good mood by explaining he hadn’t been so optimistic about his chances of survival post Thanos.

“Thanks, Tony, I’ll take really good care of them.” He took them off, and placed them back in the case, before snapping it shut again.

“I know you will.”

Peter gave him a small little nod, then went to stand up from his chair. 

“Hey wait,” said Tony. Peter stopped, put his back against the chair, listened. “How about tonight we gave that recipe another shot?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m sure together we can figure it out.” 

Peter blinked at him.

“I’m sure with Pepper’s supervision we can figure it out,” amended Tony. 

Peter laughed, and nodded his head in agreement, and once he was a good distance away, letting Morgan shoot silly string at him, Tony got back on his phone and finished ordering his FlashMob merch. Peter would get over it. Eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> so this one was more of a headcannony fic, I just know that Tony buys Spider-Man merch every time he sees it, anyway, thanks for reading!! 
> 
> kudos and comments bring life 
> 
> [or come scream at me on tumblr](https://hailing-stars.tumblr.com)


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